“Obama’s the one who never worked a day in his life. He never earned a penny that wasn’t public money. How many fund-raisers does he attend every week? How often does he play basketball and golf? I wish I had that kind of time. He’s lazy, but the media won’t report that.’ He noticed my arched eyebrows and added, ‘I didn’t come up with that. Obama said that, to Barbara Walters.”

What Ailes was referring to was an interview that Obama did with Barbara Walters back in 2011:

BARBARA WALTERS: Okay. What’s the trait you most deplore in yourself and the trait you most deplore in others?

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Laziness.

WALTERS: You’re lazy?

OBAMA: You know, it’s interesting. There is a deep down, underneath all the work I do, I think there’s a laziness in me. I mean, it’s, it’s probably from, you know, growing up in Hawaii, and it’s sunny outside and sitting on the beach.

The president wasn’t the lone target, as Ailes would also call Newt Gingrch a pr**k, and referred to Vice President Biden “As dumb as an ashtray”.

CNN weighed in, first by selectively editing out that last sentence of Ailes’ to try to put a racist spin on the remarks when they discussed this with 9/11 Truther Van Jones.

MSNBC had its resident experts on being racists, Sharpton and Toure discuss these comments. Like CNN, they also left off that last sentence of Ailes’, and also failed to cite the Walters interview that was the source of that observation. Examiner.com’s Joe Newby documented their analysis:

“This sort of ‘lazy’ term is something we heard flung at us as black people going back to slavery,” Touré told Sharpton, “which, of course, you know, we perceive them as being guilty of not wanting to work. Of course they didn’t want to work. They were slaves.”

Touré then claimed that everyone on “the Fox side of the aisle,” meaning conservatives, hold the same view of black people while offering no proof of his assertion.

“But this is a revolutionary thing that they’re doing,” he added, “saying ‘We’re going to get out of all of the work that we can,’ and then this stupid idea follows us since then. It’s this really disgusting, accessing stereotypes, red meat sort of dog whistle. On the Fox side of the aisle, they say yes, that’s right. This is what we think of black people already. And, on our side, we’re like ‘What are you talking about?’

Let’s look at how one more lefty outlet covered the story. The Huffington Post’s Robert Elsiberg had this to offer:

Though his quote is likely to get a lot of outraged attention, I actually find it very positive and encouraging. After all, the good news is that Mr. Ailes didn’t call the president shiftless, and say too that he has good rhythm, shuffles and likes watermelon.

Besides… well, sure he’s lazy. Aren’t all black people lazy in Roger Ailes Land, over there on the far right?

and went on to add

Still, Mr. Ailes does have his “Fox News” facts screwed on straight, when he empirically shows the president, proof positive, as one of those freeloading 47 percent who never earned a penny that wasn’t public money. Guilty as changed, other than the time he worked at the Sidley Austin law firm in Chicago, and the Miner, Barnhill & Galland law firm, and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for 12 years. And ran Illinois Project Vote, a non-profit organization which is totally different from “public money,” but still…. Other than all that, Roger Ailes has it spot-on right, at least by “Fox News” standards, that Barack Obama never earned a penny that wasn’t public money.

And spot on, too, that he “never worked a day in his life.” All that law firm time, and teaching, and running a non-profit business stuff? And being an Illinois state senator, and a U.S. senator, and President of the United States. That’s not work. Work?! That’s the stuff of dreams. And dreams are just a fantasy, fluff, goofing off. It’s just being lazy.

Now that we’ve looked at the silliness that came out of the left let’s look at each one. First, CNN’s selective editing doesn’t do them any favors in their quest to pretend that they’re an actual serious news network and not a leftist outlet, not to mention interviewing a racist 9/11 truther as their expert.

MSNBC didn’t help their side either, by putting assumptions in Ailes’ mouth based on their own personal racist perceptions that they wished conservatives shared. Elsiberg does more of the same, but then as evidence cites the great “work” that the president did. Um, what actual tasks did he complete, or what papers did he write, and where are the former students and professors with their glowing testimonials? If the president “ran” a non-profit how is it that he is completely ignorant as to the concept of what a budget is? This would be a great time to provide concrete examples of what Obama accomplished at *any* of his past jobs, although actually 2008 would have been a better time for that.

But now let’s look at the assertion that has the left even angrier than normal. Ailes said that the president is lazy. There’s nothing wrong with that – the president is. Obama shows his intellectual laziness in the straw man arguments that he enjoys blow torching. Yes, Obama is out constantly campaigning, but that is different form of laziness than the classic definition. When I wrote just before the last election that a big reason I believed Obama would be re-elected is that his one great love and passion in this world above all else is… Barack Obama. And what is campaigning but efforts to tell other people that they should love Barack Obama as much as Barack Obama does. The combination of appealing to his base’s spiritual neediness, he also used the natural anger and resentment at the root of most leftist thought helped them focus on who they should hate this week (Hatee du jour being Congressional Republicans).

This is the same laziness that every person reading this has fallen into at some time or another. Who as a student never worked on reports and homework for their favorite subjects first while saving for last that subject that was most difficult or one you didn’t like? Who in their working careers has been given an assignment where you first worked on all of the parts that you could easily accomplish while putting off the most difficult ones until absolutely necessary? And who here as a president avoided sitting down and conducting meaningful negotiations with political rivals or educating yourself on topics foreign to you (such as Accounting, Economics, Leadership), and instead trotted off to campaign rallies or manipulated your palace guards in the press into focusing on silly diversions like a photo demonstrating you don’t know how to fire a gun or why you wouldn’t let them cover your golf game?

OK, nobody reading this has done the last one, but hopefully you see my point as to why the assertion that the president being lazy is a fair one. He was hired to do a job whose chief responsibility is governing and he refuses to do it. A term lefties like to throw at conservative leaders is “Failure to grow while in office”, but their champion is actually a case study for this phenomena, and they share a great deal of the blame for why it is happening. Think about it – why would the president grow in office? His career has involved him being carried by others from one unearned accomplishment to the next. And now the left’s refusal to look at him honestly and challenge him to grow out of his comfort zone gives Obama no reason to do so. So the laziness charge holds true, and the left’s need to ignore why it would have been leveled against the president is part of why he he remains lazy.

I had written previously about the why I believe that many of the president’s supporters are far bigger racists than those they would level that charge at. When Eric Holder calls us a nation of cowards for not talking about race he has a valid point, although not in the way that he believes. Our failure to hold an incompetent president accountable in the same way that a white Republican would be, not to mention our failure to confront racists like the Al Sharptons of America are acts of cowardice on us as a whole1. Then again, Holder conveniently ignores how far our country progressed in terms of race relations. In 2008 we elected a black man to the highest office in the land despite being completely unqualified, and in 2012 we re-elected our first incompetent black president. How do you not call that progress?

The sad part of this is that the left is so instinctive about lunging for their race card security blanket that they missed an opportunity to level what would have been a valid complaint against Ailes. If I’m a leftist and I’m reading that interview I’d be asking how appropriate it is for the head of a major media outlet to be personally firing off such a blistering criticism of a sitting president, especially if that outlet’s views are generally opposed to the ideology of that president2. I’m sure that somebody out there on the left raised this question, but it’s sad when the two biggest left wing cable news outlets ignore the real story in favor making fools of themselves with their tired, discredited arguments.

And an even bigger opportunity was lost when they failed to challenge Ailes’ remarks suggesting that Vice President Biden is as dumb as an ash tray. What Ailes said was inappropriate, offensive, and I truly wish that the journalism community could have worked together into shaming Ailes to issue a heartfelt apology to… the ash trays.

1. Do not try playing the race card on Adam Corolla. Huffpo tried that with him and he he went thermonuclear on them in his response. It’s a great clip, but the language is highly NSFW

2. Yes, I am aware of the bias from the left in the mainstream media, and that is the subject of another post I’m working on. Unfortunately, Baby Bob has not been too sympathetic to his father’s requests for quiet blogging time.

About Brother Bob

Blogging by the credo of "Making the world a more offensive place, one blog post at a time", Brother Bob started writing posts around the beginning of the Obama presidency over at Brother Bob's Blog. A born-again Existentialist and self-professed libertarian with conservative tendencies, he has ironically chosen to live in the Washington, DC area - deep behind enemy lines. He has always loved history, and spent eight years volunteering as a tour guide on weekends, giving over 200 tours to roughly 2,500 mostly foreign guests. His tours were highlighted by stories generally not found in the history books or most other tours, such as the importance of the Battle if Antietam, the origins or Arlington Cemetery, and dispelling the myths of FDR's New Deal.
Although his favorite subject to blog about is Economics, as seen in his Economics for Politicians series, his posts try to address angles that other conservative writers and the mainstream media (naturally!) miss. "There's no point in putting up a post on a subject that someone smarter than me has already written". He believes in the "Happy Warrior" approach, and tries to inject humor in his posts, sometimes successfully. Two such examples are his posts comparing the modern left to the horrible Star Wars prequels, and analyzing the laments of a DC woman in search of a feminist boyfriend.
Brother Bob lives with his very patient wife known as Sister Babe, and their fantastic son. Little Bob. Little Bob is also the reason that being a tour guide came to an end, as spending Saturdays raising a son takes priority over giving lectures to foreign visitors on the folly of Keynesian economics.
BB is also grateful for the opportunity to take his place among the outstanding writers at Flopping Aces, appreciates every person who takes the time to read his posts, and especially those who join him in the conversation in the comments.